The present invention relates to a disc changer device that houses a plurality of optical discs (hereinafter, referred to as a “disc”) serving as information recording media, such as CDs (compact discs) and DVDs (digital versatile discs), and carries out a recording/reproducing operation on a disc selected from the discs, and more particularly to a disc changer device that carries out various operations, such as a transportation of a tray on which the disc is placed and a shift of an optical pickup that carries out a recording/reproducing operation on the disc, by using fewer motors.
Conventionally, as this type of disc changer devices, those devices that house and transport discs in a chassis that forms an outer frame of the device by using a plurality of trays have been known. In this disc changer device, those trays are stacked in a device-thickness direction that crosses at right angles with the main face of the disc, and arranged so as to be respectively moved in a device-depth direction that is in parallel with the main face of the disc. The disc changer device is designed so that each tray can be transported in the device-depth direction among a stand-by position at which a plurality of trays are housed in the chassis, a disc recording/reproducing position at which a recording or reproducing operation of information signals is carried out on a disc placed on the selected tray and a disc exchange position at which the tray is allowed to protrude from the chassis so that a disc can be placed on the tray or taken out from the tray. Moreover, the disc changer device is also designed so as to move in a radial direction of the disc an optical pickup that carries out the recording and/or reproducing operation of information signals on a disc on the tray that has been moved to the disc recording/reproducing position. Furthermore, the disc changer device is designed so that, at the disc recording/reproducing position, a traverse unit on which the optical pickup has been mounted is raised or lowered in accordance with the height position of the selected tray and the traverse unit is moved so as to clamp the disc on a turn table possessed by the traverse unit.
In the conventional disc changer device having the above-mentioned structure, at least the following five operations need to be carried out. That is, the disc change device needs to carry out a tray transportation between the stand-by position and the disc recording/reproducing position, a tray transportation between the stand-by position and the disc exchange position, a shift of an optical pickup, a raising/lowering movement of the traverse unit and a movement of the traverse unit so as to clamp the disc on a turn table. For this reason, a problem with this structure is that, in order to carry out these various operations, the number of motors used for supplying the driving force increases inevitably.
A technique has been proposed by Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2005-18934 (Patent Document 1) as a technique for solving the above-mentioned problem. In accordance with the technique disclosed in Patent Document 1, a plurality of sliders and gears are combined so that the above-mentioned five operations are achieved by using two motors by combining a plurality of sliders and gears. More specifically, in the device of Patent Document 1, one motor is used for carrying out four operations, that is, the transportation of a tray between the stand-by position and the disc recording/reproducing position, the shift of an optical pickup, the raising/lowering movement of the traverse unit and the movement of the traverse unit so as to clamp the disc on a turn table. The other motor is used for transporting a tray between the stand-by position and the disc exchange position.